Over at the journalists’ resource PoynterOnline, Al Tompkins recently did a post on the shift underway in photography toward video and the DSLR as the must-have gear.

Tompkins does a mini-interview with photographer Ami Vitale, who says this is a great time to be a photojournalist. (Clearly she hasn’t heard that journalism is imploding.) She explains:

We have more tools available than ever before and we also have an audience bigger than anytime in the history of mankind. It’s powerful, and I’d like to harness these tools and use them to communicate and create understanding in a complex world where messages are so easily misunderstood. I see this as a wonderful time to exploit all these tools for the power of good!

But as a commenter points out, the price of upgrading to remain competitive can be prohibitive, if not downright impossible, when you consider the Canon IDMK4 costs about $5,000. Most newsrooms certainly don’t have this money, and if it falls to the individual, then it seems photojournalism will increasingly be about economics.

Article via PoynterOnline